


I found (you)

by Orlha



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 00:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6682768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orlha/pseuds/Orlha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Steve sees her, his world bursts into fire. It is only a split moment that he sees it but that is all he needs. The moment that he’s been dreading yet waiting for all his life. Contradictions that Steve could never decide which one outweighed the other. It is in that one single moment that he knows that he’ll never love anyone quite like her and that fact scares him more than life itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I found (you)

**Author's Note:**

> **Read Archive warnings**
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqoVhwMDoK4 - Amber Run - I Found (Acoustic)

The first time Steve sees her, his world bursts into fire. It is only a split moment that he sees it but that is all he needs. The moment that he’s been dreading yet waiting for all his life. Contradictions that Steve could never decide which one outweighed the other. It is in that one single moment that he knows that he’ll never love anyone quite like her and that fact scares him more than life itself.

He catches her blue eyes with his, noticing the way her body shudders as her eyes seemed to suck him in. Steve wonders what kind of death she is seeing. He wonders if she is seeing the same as him. He wonders if he’ll die first or her. 

The brunette barely suppresses a tremble when she finally sticks her hand out and clears her throat. “My name is Darcy, Darcy Ann Lewis.” Her eyes are so blue and wide, fingers pushing her glasses up to level him a look. 

He takes her cold, clammy hand, gripping it gently; all too aware of Natasha’s and Clint’s piercing looks. “Steve Rogers, ma’am.” He lifts his eyes a trifle to catch Natasha’s who only blinks in understanding and wheels the others out of the communal room. 

First meetings between soulmates has never been the easiest. Perhaps it is due to the nature of his work that people here are more understanding. To know how your other half would die is a cruel thing. There are plenty of people who don’t remember enough of that split second which is the majority of the population, then there is him - him and his photographic memory.

“Do you-” Steve starts and hesitates. He isn’t too familiar with the modern society’s customs on first meetings and meeting his soulmate hasn’t exactly been on the top of his list. He should have probably have asked at least. At least their present situation would be a little less awkward. Steve tacks it up to another of on the list of regrets and depending on how long either of them live, they are always going to remember that day that he met Darcy and he couldn’t speak a word. Nothing new there.

Darcy saves the situation a little, shaking her head as she winds her arms around her, “I saw darkness,” her voice rasps with stress. “Not night. There were no stars. Just… darkness.”

Her voice breaks at her words, body racking in dry sobs. Steve wraps her in his arms, murmur indiscernible words of comfort, swaying her back and forth. “I’m going to die first, aren’t I?” she finally says later. 

Steve’s not sure how long they had been standing there, but the sun is beginning to descend across the rooftops of New York and it had only felt like a moment ago that he just had finished gym and had lunch with Natasha. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know how.

“Tell me,” Darcy demands, scrubbing the dried tear tracks from her face. She lifts her chin up defiantly at his silence and Steve can see exactly would have probably made him love her if he hadn’t already fallen in love with her.

“On a bed, in a white room surrounded by people,” Steve lies. He doesn’t tell her that she is staring at him as he carries her through fire or that her hands aren’t wrinkled and old. He wants her to think she die when she is old, that she will die naturally. It’s easier for her to live her life that way and it’s impossible to defy fate. Many people have tried over eons and enough times that even the legends of the old days caution against it but Steve will be damned if he doesn’t try.

Darcy looks at him, stares at him then gives him a slow nod. “Okay. Coffee then?” She smiles at him so brilliantly that Steve thinks he’s gone blind for a moment and he might be okay with that.

“Coffee.” He crooks his his elbow out and she takes it.

\----

He learns that she’s the lab manager for the two most irresponsible, reckless and scatter-brained scientists in the Avengers’ Tower. It’s not that he didn’t know she is a lab manager in the Avengers’ scientist department, it is just that he didn’t think that there was anyone who could live in the security of the Avengers’ Tower and still be constantly in danger. It is after the sixth lab accident in three days that he stands at the door, uncaring of the streak of dirt across his face or the rip across the very special kevlar that not even missiles can destroy but somehow has a rip anyway because Thor has failed to tell them that bligesnipes has claws with missile destructiveness. 

“I am taking Darcy out for lunch,” Steve tells Erik and Jane who have somehow miraculously gone straight back to work after accident code 3329-21-B. It is a sign that they have far too many accidents if he has memorised the top 100 lab accident codes without even meaning to.

“What? No! That experimented just proved that-”

“I am taking Darcy out for lunch,” Steve repeats, cutting Jane off before she could continue further.

“But we have lab results!” It’s not that he doesn’t understand, he really does and really does try to share Darcy in spite of the nights she spends at the lab instead of the enormous bed Stark had specially ordered for them.

Darcy snickers at the corner of the lab, hands typing furiously on the keyboard as she watches Jane and Erik bicker with Steve. It always amazes Steve how she could type perfect reports without even looking at her keyboards, a feat that he’s tried and failed several times.

“I am taking Darcy out for lunch and we are not coming back until tomorrow.” Sliding his hand into Darcy’s, he wheels around, and enters the lift.

“Floor, sir?” Jarvis asks coolly.

“Lobby.”

Darcy gapes at him and bursts into laughter. “You’re not serious about going out for lunch in your Captain America outfit, are you?”

“I don’t care what I wear. We are going out for lunch. It’s been ages since we went _anywhere._ ” If there’s a plaintive whine in his voice, Steve doesn’t care. 

Darcy slides her arms around his waist, pressing her chin against his chest. “Honey. I can think of _much_ better things to do with your forceful hijack of my time.”

Her smile is coy and triumphant when he clears his throats and address the AI. “My floor please, Jarvis.”

“Very good, sir.” 

“I love you, Darcy,” he says and presses a kiss on her forehead.

“And I love you more than life,” she replies with twinkling eyes.

\----

“I don’t really know if I want to be a lab manager all my life,” she starts one morning, resting a chin on her knee as she watches him change his clothes.

“What do you want to do?” he asks, rummaging through the pile of clothes that really should be taken for laundry. It is Sunday and neither of them can be arsed to throw the clothes into the washing machine. Steve can’t remember if he has been this way since the 1930s but lately he finds himself less reminiscent of the good old days and just happy that he’s here now. Occasionally he wonders what would have happened if he had not crashed the plane in the ice. Would his soulmate have been born then? Or had he been bound to Darcy because he missed her the first time.

Bruce has a lot of theories over such things though unsurprisingly, he thinks it’s a thing that would have happened anyway. He’s not sure of how, but Steve doesn’t remember of how life used to be before the SHIELD, before the Avengers, before Darcy.

“I don’t know. What do you think I should do?” 

Steve gives her a sideways look and pulls a relatively clean shirt from the pile. “It’s your life, sweetheart. I don’t think I should be telling you what you should do.”

“I wanted to be a politician before I met Jane.”

“So what happened to that?” 

Darcy shuffles to the edge of the bed, swinging her legs to the ground. Steve finds her favourite sweater and shirt and throws it at her which she catches. “I don’t know if I want to be a politician now, after all that shit with Bucky. I don’t think I could go down that way.”

“What about criminal justice?” Steve offers. “Or a lawyer. I think you’d make a great lawyer.”

“Oh yea? What do you know about being a lawyer?” She has that look on her, the look that Steve has learnt that he’s better have a good explanation or they are going to argue until the cows come home.

He looks at her. “You know that the Daredevil is an Avenger and also a lawyer, right?”

“He’s a lawyer?” Her eyes widen at her words. Steve’s actually not at all taken aback that she isn’t aware despite the number of interactions with the Daredevil and her. If anything, he’s almost mute about his personal life and somehow that suits Darcy who fills their conversations with Steve and Bucky’s shenanigans. 

She purses her lips and muses over his suggestions. It’s a good suggestion. Steve has already long known that she might have come to the conclusion that she doesn’t want to be a lab manager all her life. Darcy might love Jane and Erik to bits, but in the end she is the sort who needs her life fulfilled, the sort who lives her life vivaciously. As much as he loves her being safe in the tower, Steve would never let his need for her security compromise her happiness.

“I might be a good lawyer?” 

“Well, the Daredevil thinks you would be.”

“Have I told you, I love you, Steve?”

He grins at her, “And I love you more than life.”

And that look she sends him is all he needs. 

\----

Steve wonders what he’s done to ever deserve a damn like her. Her soft breaths warm a spot on his chest and the smell of her hair is all he ever needs to feel like he’s home. He hasn’t felt this happy, this contented for a really long time. It has been fight after fight until Steve occasionally forgets why he’s actually fighting until he comes home and slips under the blankets, holding Darcy close to him.

Somewhere along the line, he’s stopped fighting to protect humanity from their stupidity and started fighting for her. He curls his arms protectively around her, fighting the urge to hide her from the rest of the world so that she can always be safe. Steve wonders how Clint does it, wonders how he watches Natasha going into battle every time, praying that she would safe. He knows he can’t do that.

It isn’t the first time that he’s glad that she’s just a normal civilian.

“Steve?” She shuffles her head into his chest, her feet tangling into his as she heaves a small, sleepy sigh of relief. His foot accidentally pushes a pile of her textbooks and notes off the bed but she only presses her head closer to his chest, tucking her hands on the slopes of his back.

“I love you Darcy,” he whispers.

“And I love you more than life,” she mumbles.

\----

He’s always had known this day would come. Fate has a tendency of getting her way. He was just a mere boy in the path of a typhoon and no matter how he would try to stop it, it would always happen.

It surprises him that it’s not in a lab when it does. Or perhaps it scares him even more that it’s not in the labs. He had plans A to R for every possible eventuality occurring in the lab and also plans 1 to 26 for every other possibility in the kitchen. But it is not the kitchen or the lab when it happens, it’s not even in a place that was known to have a fire.

How the hell does the bathroom even catch fire?

Steve doesn’t know, doesn’t care. He just knows that for some reason, there are layers of walls surrounding the room that Darcy was in and there is fire in there.

“Get the walls down, Stark!” he demands.

He sees Stark’s fingers flying across the screen of his tablet but nothing is happening. “They locked out!” Stark goes on a rant on how Jarvis is impossible to hack but all Steve can feel is the seeping cold in his bones.

“The walls!” Steve calls out again.

“Calm down. You know she’ll live through this. You saw her death. Old and wrinkled,” Clint tries to calm him when he tries to punch his way through.

“I lied!” His breaths are a mash of harsh stuttering gasps. “Please! Not this fire-”

“Shit man.”

Steve punches the wall over and over again but the wall is built for supersoldiers and it barely even breaks dust off. Clint comes back later with a sledgehammer but Stark mercifully has managed to break through the hack and get the walls down. 

Even at the edge of it, Steve can feel the searing heat of the fire. Was he too late? He dashes into the room, indifferent to the burning of the skin. The only thing that matters is Darcy.

The room is ablaze and Darcy has managed to douse herself with enough water and huddle at on the floor at a corner to escape most of it’s effects.

“I’m here, Darcy.” He lifts her, trying to sprint back to Stark and the others, then there is that sense of deja vu. The room, the layout, the fire, the very thing he was wearing. “I love you Darcy,” he says. 

She places a hand on his chest, the way she does at that split moment. Her lips are murmuring the words he knows she’s said a million times, the phrase that has become their phrase. “ _And I love you more than life.”_

He’s sobbing when he finally makes it out of the room and crumples to the ground. The world is spinning around him as he clutches her to him. There are medics there, but they are too late.

**Author's Note:**

> Do not blame the author for your inability to read tags and author's note.


End file.
